Memo to Washington: this is what happens when you let the Times run your foreign policy.

According to some early reports, which may of course be wrong, Ms. Bhutto was actually assassinated twice. First she was shot in the head by a sniper, and then a little later her whole entourage was blown up by a suicide bomber. You can't say these people aren't thorough. Of course, using multiple assassins isn't exactly a new idea, but it's always impressive when more than one gets through. You might say it sends something of a message.

Who whacked Benazir Bhutto? And why? Obviously, I have no idea at all. (All rumors that I, or the select group of international arms executives, oil sheiks and gold speculators I advise, are involved in any clandestine activities, are unsubstantiated.*)

Let me start, however, by explaining the power dynamics of Pakistan. You probably already know this and if you don't I discussed it earlier, but it is certainly worth refreshing.

Political power in Pakistan is shared among a huge variety of parties, gangs, cliques, alliances, mafias, liberation fronts, Islamic sects, human-rights groups, military units, and the like. All of them have one goal: to maximize their capture of the economic production of the Indus River basin. You may think of this area as a shithole, and it would be going too far to say that you are utterly wrong, but it is also a traditionally prosperous and influential region. It continues to be inhabited by many productive and civilized individuals. And anyone who owns or commands any share in its government or revenue can become almost arbitrarily wealthy.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the Pakistani movements are presently aligned in three major factions. None of these factions has yet been able to defeat either of the others. However, each has its own vision of a Pakistan in which it prevails totally, and any of them could win.

The first and simplest faction is the Pakistani military. Call it PakMil. PakMil's assets are a (relatively) cohesive command structure, military superiority in all conventional conflicts, and a fat-walleted, well-muscled Western patron in the US DoD.

In PakMil's vision of the future, Pakistan looks a lot like Singapore or Dubai. It is a peaceful, wealthy country with strong internal order and as little politics as possible. PakMil retains many organizational traditions from the British Empire, which had it survived would surely have maintained the Indus River basin in just this manner.

Unfortunately, PakMil is the weakest faction in Pakistan. At least, I think it's the least likely to win. PakMil's problem is that its American patron is on the Republican side of the fence (ie, it is a client of the Red Empire), and historically this is not a stable position. Ask Ngo Dinh Diem, Ferdinand Marcos or Fulgencio Batista how well that one worked out. To be identified as a client of the Red Empire, a horrible dictatorship etc, and survive, your regime pretty much needs to be sitting on a trillion barrels of oil. Which PakMil ain't. (See my advice for PakMil, which I think is still pretty much valid.)

PakMil is of course losing strength because of the decline of the Bush Administration, which is now completely moribund and nonoperational. George W. Bush has about as much influence in Washington these days as the Pope. If not a little less. (Certainly less than Bono.)

The second faction in Pakistan, intermediate in power (ie, probability of victory) is the Westernist faction: journalists, human-rights groups, lawyers, professors, and other well-heeled, well-educated mouth-flappers. Let's call the Westernist polity NGOstan.

In the vision of NGOstan, Pakistan turns into New Jersey. That is, it becomes a normal Third World country with a lot of corruption, but a government that is basically stable and secure, and has no significant enemies foreign or domestic. Such as, for example, India or Sri Lanka. While this state of affairs is by no means as profitable as the Dubai state of affairs, it still provides plenty of cash for all kinds of people. It also generates more government jobs, which is not an insignificant factor in that part of the world. (Or any part of the world.)

NGOstan is (or was) of course Bhutto's faction. Its chief claim to fame is that it is sponsored by the Western establishment, ie the State Department, the Times, etc, etc. It is clean and sweet and true. At least, relatively clean and sweet and true.

Obviously, it is not a secret that Bhutto herself was a mob queen, at least that many of her associates were gangsters, but the Westernists had an easy solution for this. If they needed to come across as especially clean and sweet and true, they could just condemn Bhutto as a mob queen. She was not offended, at least not unusually offended. You think she didn't know she was a gangster? So, for example, this article by Jemima Khan did not terminate the membership of Imran Khan as a leading capo in NGOstan. If Musharraf goes down, there will be plenty for everyone to eat.

The main disadvantage of the Westernists - as we've just seen - is that they have no significant military or paramilitary arm. They have loose connections to a wide variety of small-time gangsters, and they have a powerful base in the feudal Pakistani political parties. I'm sure Bhutto knew people who knew people who could get somebody whacked, but a really sustained campaign of terror and murder was just beyond her.

Since no one will ever be able to capture and hold Pakistan without some real muscle, the NGOstanis have only two options. One is to capture the military, the other to depend on the Islamists. Since they weren't born yesterday, they work both angles. Obviously, this is a dangerous strategy, and obviously it has not worked out for the best.

Capturing and commanding PakMil is the only viable exit strategy for NGOstan. It is never a good idea to assume that powerful people are stupid, and I'm sure the human-rights groups recognize that if it's them against the mullahs, the mullahs will kick their asses. We are talking about a country which is next door to Iran, after all.

However, NGOstan needs the Islamists, because it cannot succeed without causing trouble, and the only people who can cause trouble in Pakistan are the Islamists. If there is no trouble in Pakistan, Pakistan gets no press in the West. People forget about it. And if Pakistan gets no press in the West, all of its human-rights groups and journalists and lawyers and other people who are good and clean and true might as well be on the dark side of Uranus for all the good their fancy Harvard and Oxford connections will do.

Obviously, the Islamists are our third faction. Call them Talibstan. There is very little to say about the Talibstanis, but my guess is that they will win in the end. Probably after an intermediate victory by the Westernists, exactly as in Iran.

The Islamists are the natural winners because, as today's events proved, they are the baddest motherfuckers between the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. These niggaz make the Russian mob look like the Catholic Church. They are to the Crips as the Crips are to the Salvation Army. To MS-13 as MS-13 is to the Moose Lodge. We're talking about some stone cold thug killaz, and the smart money has to be on them.

The Islamists were suspicious of Bhutto because of the possibility that she might ally with Musharraf, and NGOstan and PakMil would get together and hunt them both down. Clearly, this is Washington's official, bipartisan, centrist plan. It has little chance of working, because NGOstan has no incentive to eradicate Talibstan unless it attains full and permanent control over PakMil, and PakMil can frustrate this objective simply by refusing to fight Talibstan whenever civilian politicians seem to be gaining control over the Pakistani military.

But this alliance between State, Defense, Bhutto and Musharraf, while about as durable as a pile of eggs, was obviously serious enough to worry some people. And, as we've seen, these people are not exactly given to restraint. So Bhutto was walking a very delicate tightrope. She had to ride to power on the wave of Islamic terror. This is a very funky wave, full of logs, dead hogs and used tires, and you certainly don't want to wipe out on it.

It's essential to remember that within the Pakistani opposition to Musharraf, that there is no precise division between Westernist and Islamists. For example, Nawaz Sharif has ties to Westernist forces and ties to Islamist forces. There are people who have positioned themselves between Sharif and Bhutto, people who are between Sharif and Mullah Omar, etc, etc.

There is also a continuum between Musharraf and the Islamists, Musharraf and Bhutto, etc, etc. All of these allegiances can shift with the tides of fate. When affairs of state are decided by factions organized on the basis of opinion, opinions become remarkably flexible. This is not to say that there are no genuine convictions at all in Pakistan, but it is more or less impossible for an outside observer to distinguish them with any degree of confidence. What is very clear is that no two of the three groups can truly share power, and once one of them collapses either another will follow, or the conflict between the remaining two will become even more violent.

My guess is that Benazir Bhutto's death makes some people in the Islamist movement happy, and some people unhappy. I suspect that the same can be said for the Pakistani military. Since these feelings are relatively private, you will probably not be able to read about them in the New York Times, or at UR for that matter. All will feign sadness. But some will be laughing, deep down inside. If you are under some illusion that modern politics, let alone modern Pakistani politics, is anything like a fit occupation for honorable gentlemen or ladies, I fear you are setting yourself up for nothing but disappointment.

When this whole idea of Bhutto returning to Pakistan started to crop up, I exchanged some emails on the subject with a friend of mine who is from Pakistan via Dubai. While my correspondent is 100% Westernized, his parents are not. And right up until Bhutto actually got off the plane, by his report, they were confident that no such thing could happen. Because the people at the State Department could not possibly be so stupid.

One interesting way to review these events is to read a series of articles on Pakistan that have appeared in the Times since my first post on the crisis. I am not going to go into as much detail this time. I think the general concept ought to be clear.

First, on November 6, we have this op-ed by (or supposedly by) Bhutto herself, Musharraf's Martial Plan:

In this piece, Pinkie, or at least Pinkie's people, make the standard demands. Surrender or be crushed. Etc, etc. And they roll out the standard argument, which is that suspending habeas corpus is not only an ineffective way to fight a civil war, but actually counterproductive:

The United States can promote democracy — which is the only way to truly contain extremism and terrorism — by telling General Musharraf that it does not accept martial law, and that it expects him to conduct free, fair, impartial and internationally monitored elections within 60 days under a reconstituted election commission.

Tell it to Seward's little bell, kids. But no, Pinkie's love for Pakistan is so great that she has no concern for her personal safety:

Very conveniently, the assassination attempt against me last month that resulted in the deaths of at least 140 people is being used as the rationale to stop the democratic process by which my party would most likely have swept parliamentary elections.

Ya think? In a best-case scenario, I imagine Benazir Bhutto as a sort of Pakistani Carmela Soprano, kind of semi-consciously turning a blind eye to her husband's profession. In that case, I suppose I should feel a little sympathy, and my real anger should be at the power brokers behind her pointless and astoundingly dangerous career as a political mafia queen.

Okay. So we move on to November 17, and this equally meretricious piece by David Rohde, Envoy Elicits No New Promises. Note that this is not an op-ed or even "news analysis." This here is hard news:

I am particularly fond of the detail that Ambassador Negroponte met with General Kaylani alone. It's sort of as if Little Carmine had dispatched Johnny Sack to meet privately with Paulie Walnuts. After which, Tony would have the privilege of a meeting with both of them.

I'm also enchanted with this sentence:

The move — which General Musharraf has said is an effort to curb terrorism — is widely seen by Pakistanis as an effort by the increasingly unpopular ruler to cling to power.

I am quite confident that whoever is the next leader of Pakistan, he or she will not be clinging to power, like a rat on a floating board. Rather, I would like to think that Pakistan will experience a period of actual political stability. Somehow, I'm not sure Mr. Rohde's efforts (I momentarily mistyped his name, and started to wonder if he was also responsible for the Jameson raid) have made that more likely.

I also wonder: there is such a thing as a mob lawyer. Is there such a thing as a mob journalist? The mind boggles.

Despite the promising headline above, in the month after Ambassador Sacrimoni's visit, Musharraf and/or his people caved. He promised to step down as army chief and did. He promised elections, and banned Sharif while allowing Bhutto to run. He ended the state of emergency. The only steps he refused to take were those that obviously would have signaled the end of his regime and of PakMil as an independent power, such as restoring the suspended judges.

We quickly saw the truth of the matter on the alliance between Pinkie and the Islamists. On December 12, Carlotta Gall, who is well-named indeed, recounted a truly tear-jerking tale, Picture of Secret Detentions Emerges in Pakistan:

No more Fort McHenry for the little Sewards of the Hindu Kush! I'm afraid that these days, if Pakistan wants to detain people like the murderers of Daniel Pearl - whom Carlotta Gall may well have known in person - it won't just be able to starve them to death and toss them on a garbage heap. It will have to give them a five-star, gold-plated trial, with enough lawyers to invade Nepal. I'm sure Angelina Jolie will be happy to pay for all this.

So why not just let your prisoners go instead? If you have to play by these rules, why play at all? Just sit tight, things will go to hell, and the rules will change back again. They have to. If they don't, it's definitely time to buy those Emirates tickets.

Oh, I'm sure a few of these detainees are "innocent." But frankly, the Romans had it right when they said that the law is silent in time of war. If your country is invaded by an enemy army, you can't arrest every soldier wearing the wrong uniform, and charge them with trespassing. And the same applies even if the enemy adopts an urban guerrilla strategy.

What's going on in Pakistan is war, and the concept of "guilt" and "innocence" is not even meaningful in war. Your enemies are not criminals. They are enemies. The criminalization of war, the move to redefine every war as a police action, creates nasty, interminable and recurring conflicts that cannot be won.

As Edward Luttwak points out, all guerrilla wars, urban or rural (urban guerrilla is a common euphemism, meaning terrorist) can be won by detaining every human being who might possibly be an enemy, holding them securely until the war is over and the winner is clear, and then releasing them without punishment. Like, duh, man. Which has more negative impact on innocent civilians: internment in a civilized detention center, or involvement in a civil war?

As Trinquier wrote in Modern War, the service that the Westernists are performing on behalf of the Islamists is an absolute military necessity:

Modern warfare is a new experience for the majority of our fellow citizens. Even among our friends, the systematic conduct of raids will run into opposition, resulting generally from a total lack of understanding of the enemy and his methods of warfare. This will often be very difficult to overcome.

For example, the fact that the enemy's warfare organization in a single city may consist of several thousand men will come as a surprise even to the majority of high administrative functionaries, who thought sincerely that they were dealing with only a few isolated criminals.

One of the first problems encountered, that of lodging the individuals arrested, will generally not have been anticipated. Prisons, designed essentially to accommodate offenders against common law, will rapidly become inadequate and will not meet our needs. We will be compelled to intern the prisoners under improvised, often deplorable conditions, which will lead to justifiable criticism our adversaries will exploit. From the beginning of hostilities, prison camps should be set up according to the conditions laid down by the Geneva Convention. They should be sufficiently large to take care of all prisoners until the end of the war.

By every means - and this is a quite legitimate tactic - our opponents will seek to slow down and, if possible, put an end to our operations. The fact that a state of war will generally not have been declared will be, as we have already indicated, one of their most effective means of achieving this. In particular, they will attempt to have arrested terrorists treated as ordinary criminals and to have members of their organization considered as minor peacetime offenders.

On this subject, the files of the Algiers terrorist organization divulged some particularly interesting documents. "We are no longer protected by legality," wrote the chief of the Algiers F.L.N. in 1957, when the army had taken over the functions of the police. "We ask all our friends to do the impossible to have legality re-established; otherwise we are lost."

Actually, the peacetime laws gave our enemies maximum opportunities for evading pursuit; it was vital to them that legality be strictly applied. The appeal was not launched in vain. Shortly thereafter, a violent press campaign was unleashed, both in France and abroad, demanding that peacetime laws be strictly adhered to in the course of police operations.

That's life in the big city, kids. If your spectacles were more rosy, I am sorry to have to break it to you. Please do not blame the bearer of bad news.

Next, we have the anonymous and stentorian voice of the Times editors themselves (could even Pinch have taken an interest?), on December 22, in an aptly-titled editorial - Weakening Pakistan:

This is the pure voice of power. When it has its dudgeon up, the Times does not ask. It tells. When it is displeased, it says so frankly. One does not make little jokes with the Times.

But perhaps someone there does have a sense of humor. On Christmas Eve, a whole gaggle of Timesmen and Timeswomen - perhaps already salivating about the Pulitzers to come - suggest that perhaps Mushie's revenue stream from the US taxpayer should be cut off, in U.S. Officials See Waste in Billions Sent to Pakistan (sometimes you just can't make these headlines up):

I love the bit about Zardari being the "Nelson Mandela of Pakistan." Perhaps more the Jacob Zuma of Pakistan. But might the label be more apt than it seems? Surely a topic for another day.

(* - No, I do not really advise a select group of international arms executives, oil sheiks and gold speculators. Although perhaps it's not too late to start! If you are reading UR and you happen to be an international arms executive, oil sheik, or gold speculator...)

22 Comments:

WM said...

tggp always gives you flak over calling the palis the 'pearl of the blue empire'. you're at least as far off the mark with the pakistani military being the 'puppet of the red empire' -- you are aware that paki secret service (ISI) lends a hand to the taliban now and then and made a separate peace with all the wackos of waziristan?

'Nato is now mapping the entire Taliban support structure in Balochistan, from ISI- run training camps near Quetta to huge ammunition dumps, arrival points for Taliban's new weapons and meeting places of the shura..'

The red empire, due to its rather unimpressive track record in protecting its clients, has all of them hedging their bets. Perhaps the word "empire" implies too much control. It's a matter of record that billions and billions of dollars have gone from the Treasury to the Pakistani military, but the latter are perfectly competent at looking out for #1.

If the Pakistani Army knew its left flank was covered, it could dispose of the Taliban in a second. But it needs the Islamists to justify the presence of the military in politics. DoD could not protect it from State without this factor, and would also have no motivation to fund it. It doesn't need the Islamists to be as strong as they are now, but it's working on that.

And the Palis have their own freakin' UN agency, for Christ' sakes. Talk about a self-licking ice-cream cone.

In the vision of NGOstan, Pakistan turns into New Jersey. That is, it becomes a normal Third World country with a lot of corruption, but a government that is basically stable and secure, and has no significant enemies foreign or domestic. Such as, for example, India or Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has the Tigers.

India has Pakistan and the Naxalites.

However, they are both basically stable and secure, so this doesn't diminish your point much.

If the Pakistani Army knew its left flank was covered, it could dispose of the Taliban in a second. But it needs the Islamists to justify the presence of the military in politics. DoD could not protect it from State without this factor, and would also have no motivation to fund it. It doesn't need the Islamists to be as strong as they are now, but it's working on that.

This is simplistic. PakMil has military superiority on paper, but so did France in 1940. In reality PakMil is inefficient, corrupt, full of Islamic and NGOist sympathisers and riddled with internal politics.

Given how far each side is from victory, Afgahn style collapse of the state seems the likeliest outcome.

it's funny that the only place i could find your view of the pakistani military as a master controller of the islamists -- rather than a sometimes bedfellow -- was the carnegie endowment for peace!

http://www.carnegieendowment.org /files/45.grare.final.pdf

talk about blue empire! this is like the fucking home counties!

priceless passage:

"Yet evidence is scant that these organizations [islamists]pose an uncontrollable threat. Also, aPakistan headed by an Islamist party wouldnot necessarily be unstable. In fact, in theexisting power setup, politico-religious organizationshave often been used to channel popularresentment in a socially and politicallyacceptable way, preventing unrest."

To be identified as a client of the Red Empire, a horrible dictatorship etc, and survive, your regime pretty much needs to be sitting on a trillion barrels of oil.

But the PakMil ARE sitting on a bunch of nukes. The outside world would much rather the PakMil controlled those nukes than either of the other two factions. This is a card the PakMil will play as often as it can if it is smart.

it becomes a normal Third World country with a lot of corruption, but a government that is basically stable and secure, and has no significant enemies foreign or domestic. Such as, for example, India or Sri Lanka.

This is a joke, right? Both Sri Lanka and India are fighting significant internal insurgencies, and India even has two of them (Islamic in the west and Maoist in the east). India also has two significant external enemies, Pakistan and China, which are in a de facto military alliance. Both of them are pointing nukes at India, and are supporting the aforementioned insurgencies within India.

There is very little to say about the Talibstanis, but my guess is that they will win in the end.

What you are missing in your analysis is the abundant evidence of PakMil support of the Talibstanis. The PakMil, and specifically its military intelligence arm, the ISI, brokered western aid to the Afghan insurgents, and was in a position to determine which faction won the post-Soviet civil war in Afghanistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan until 2001 should be regarded as a wholly owned subsidiary of the PakMil. When the USA overthrew the Taliban after 9/11, the PakMil allowed the Taliban to establish what is essentially a "government in exile" within Pakistan and to continue their fight against western forces in Afghanistan. Pakistani efforts to "fight" the Talibstanis within Afghanistan are a farce, a kabuki play - they do just enough to appear to be "fighting terror" without actually seriously harming the Talibstanis. When western forces leave Afghanistan, the Taliban will leave Pakistan and, with PakMil support and encouragement, will again take over Afghanistan.

I do mention it a little. But I definitely should have emphasized the ties between the Islamists and various military groups more.

You simply cannot see any of the three factions in Pakistan as a unit. Parts of the Pakistani military/ISI are certainly abetting the Taliban (which, commenters are correct to note, was a creation of PakMil in the first place.)

But other parts of the Pakistani military, are genuinely in a shooting war with the Islamists. Real bullets are being fired in Swat, for example.

How do the former parts feel about the latter parts, and vice versa? I have no idea. I'm sure it is very complicated. And it will certainly not be found in the New York Times.

The point is that the simplest possible perspective of Pakistan is obtained by assuming that none of the forces contending for power are angels, and all are motivated by rational self-interest. There are certainly ideologies as well, but the ideologies serve to strengthen rather than work against the Machiavellian behavior.

The only answer can be that PakMil needs both the Westernists and the Islamists, because it has no exit strategy that involves turning Pakistan into Burma.

In particular, the idea that you can suppress guerrilla movements without also suppressing "nonviolent" politics has no basis in reality. Unless you are actually prepared to deploy death squads and other counter-gang techniques, which makes even me a little queasy.

The problem is that Burma has no way to turn into Dubai. China or Russia can defy the Carnegie Institute - with difficulty. For Pakistan or Burma, no chance. Dubai and Singapore and Hong Kong exist not because they could be created now, but because they are grandfathered accidents of history.

What the Carnegie Institute doesn't realize is that if you want Marcus Aurelius, you need Augustus. If you want Augustus, you need Caesar. (Btw, wm, that quote is priceless.)

Okay, Sri Lanka and India were probably a stretch. It is also a stretch to describe New Jersey as a corrupt Third World republic.

But the Tigers are a secessionist movement, not a revolutionary one. They are not an existential threat to the Sinhalese state, and never have been. And I suspect for many people they count as an asset. Why solve the problem? No problem, no solution, nothing for the problem-solvers to do.

I know very little about the Naxalites. I suspect the name is little more than a label for a certain type of bandit.

It's unfortunate that the hangman's art has been so sadly neglected of late in the Indian subcontinent. Lord Curzon or Akbar the Great would certainly have known how to deal with all these people.

At least when it comes to defending against the West (as opposed to India), nukes are useless in the hands of PakMil alone. Because PakMil cannot credibly threaten to use them against the West.

However, PakMil can certainly threaten credibly that they may fall into the hands of the Taliban. Thus making itself quite essential to America's national security. Ah, foreign policy. What would we do without it?

Putin and Musharraf killed Bhutto. Putin and Musharraf have been coming together for years now. Bhutto was the US/Israeli/British stooge who was being primed to topple Musharraf. And Russia cut it off at the pass.

What you seem to forget is that it is the longstanding Brzezinski policy to encircle Russia and break it into 4 parts. The war in Central Asia is just that, plus the crushing and breakup of the islamic countries in the Middle East to control the oil.

Whereas it was easier to control the Middle East before with the hegemonic US dollar as a reserve currency, now with the US dollar fading and losing reserve currency status, it is imperative to openly control the region through outright force, so the dollar can be phased out and the amero ushered in, whilst the US/Israeli/British axis still controls the oil.

This situation is very high priority for the globalists now, because it throws off their whole timetable, and the citizenry in many countries now is waking up to the globalist One World Government plan. Putin is a major thorn in their side. One great patriot, in my opinion. And his rise buys those of us opposed to WWIII some time to reverse things.

The globalist agenda is bogging down, and the people are waking up to the use of state sponsored terror attacks like 911 to whip up support for foreign wars, and how deeply Israel has insinuated itself into the US military and State Department heirarchies. Things are getting awfully interesting and dangerous too. The globalists may stage another fake terrorist attack, but one much larger to scare the daylights out of people. I'm quite worried about this situation.

What you seem to forget is that it is the longstanding Brzezinski policy to encircle Russia and break it into 4 parts.

Brzezinski - and the ideas he represents - does not now, and did not ever, control US foreign policy. The Washington Establishment (the Brahmins, the universalists, the progressives, whatever you want to call them) has always, from FDR through today, favored cooperation ("detente") with Russia. This strategy requires not the weakening and dismemberment of Russia, but the opposite, or the strengthening of Russia. After all, you need a strong state to cooperate with to secure world order in Eurasia; you can't achieve this with a dismembered rump state.

I discuss the events a bit here at my blog, mostly linking to the opinions of others. I think your favorite punching bag, Matthew Yglesias, aquitted himself better over this story here and here.

Obviously, I have no idea at all.That might have made a good sentence for this post.

Let me start, however, by explaining the power dynamics of Pakistan.Which you are aware of due to your impressive powers of haruspicy.

All of them have one goal: to maximize their capture of the economic production of the Indus River basin.Sounds a lot like Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's theories, but I think a lot of political actors are a bit more irrational than that.

And anyone who owns or commands any share in its government or revenue can become almost arbitrarily wealthy.How rich is Musharraf, anyway?

In PakMil's vision of the future, Pakistan looks a lot like Singapore or Dubai.What the hell makes you say that? Has ol' Pervez been making such claims? Neither Singapore nor Dubai were run by military juntas. Those tend to look more like Cold War Greece, which went through several coups while it was under that form of government. You really just seem to be projecting your own vision on the coalition you've decided to support, which is funny considering how often the Universalists you decry have gotten burned doing the same damned thing.

Unfortunately, PakMil is the weakest faction in Pakistan.Doesn't seem at all that way to me. They've been in power for a fairly long time by Pakistani regime standards and they don't seem afraid of protestors.

PakMil's problem is that its American patron is on the Republican side of the fence (ie, it is a client of the Red Empire), and historically this is not a stable position.I find it so puzzling that you persist in believing that the Democrats aren't in favor of American hegemony. How different was Clinton from Bush or Carter from anyone else?

Ask Ngo Dinh Diem, Ferdinand Marcos or Fulgencio Batista how well that one worked out.Considering how many governments we're said to have overthrown, that sounds like cherry-picking. Why not ask Madero, Allende and Mossadegh?

PakMil is of course losing strength because of the decline of the Bush Administration, which is now completely moribund and nonoperational. George W. Bush has about as much influence in Washington these days as the Pope.I was under the impression he had the power to veto laws, and that was only overcome by the Dem Congress for pork. That election back in 06 was supposed to be about ending the Iraq war, yet on it goes.

In the vision of NGOstan, Pakistan turns into New Jersey.I believe that has the highest per-capita income among U.S states.

That is, it becomes a normal Third World country with a lot of corruption, but a government that is basically stable and secure, and has no significant enemies foreign or domestic.Are you sure that's not the vision of the military?

NGOstan is (or was) of course Bhutto's faction. Its chief claim to fame is that it is sponsored by the Western establishmentIt was supported by Bush, and the plan was power-sharing with Musharraf.

She was not offended, at least not unusually offended. You think she didn't know she was a gangster?That still doesn't mean she liked being called out on it. Supporters of Bhutto would try to avoid discussing such things and opponents would bring it up.

I'm sure Bhutto knew people who knew people who could get somebody whackedHer brother found that out.

We are talking about a country which is next door to Iran, after all.When discussing India, would we say "We are talking about a country which is next door to Pakistan"? That would be giving the statement too much credit for relevance since Pakistan is a major issue for India, while Iran is not that important to Pakistan. Iran is the defender of Shi'ites (what other country is going to claim that role?) and the islamists in Pakistan have been whomping on them for a good long while without Iran having much influence over things. In Pakistan the Shi'ites tend to go for secular left movements like Bhutto's since emphasizing religion would remind the majority that they are a minority.

If there is no trouble in Pakistan, Pakistan gets no press in the West. People forget about it. And if Pakistan gets no press in the West, all of its human-rights groups and journalists and lawyers and other people who are good and clean and true might as well be on the dark side of Uranus for all the good their fancy Harvard and Oxford connections will do.Which is so completely different from PakMil, which needs islamists to cause trouble so that their staying in power seems necessary to us and we keep sending them money and military equipment.

There is very little to say about the Talibstanis, but my guess is that they will win in the end.What's all this talk about "end"? It never ends until the sun goes nova, and possibly long after then through the heat death of the universe. Give us a date by which something is to occur.

Probably after an intermediate victory by the Westernists, exactly as in Iran.I know the French and Russian revolutions had periods where moderates took charge before being overthrown by radicals, but I don't think that was the case in Iran. Khomeini was leading it from the beginning. The first major demonstration was over a newspaper story attacking him.

The Islamists are the natural winners because, as today's events proved, they are the baddest motherfuckers between the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean.Islamists don't have good track records against military juntas. Remember Hama?

az[...]azOh, stop it, you just come off looking silly.

This is not to say that there are no genuine convictions at all in Pakistan, but it is more or less impossible for an outside observer to distinguish them with any degree of confidence.Most of us would then cut our losses while we're ahead by not speculating about things we are ignorant of.

Pinkie's love for Pakistan is so great that she has no concern for her personal safetyIt's quite possible she was both corrupt and brave. Severe cases of greed and hubris can do that to you.

In a best-case scenario, I imagine Benazir Bhutto as a sort of Pakistani Carmela Soprano, kind of semi-consciously turning a blind eye to her husband's profession.Officially, the fictional husband wore the pants while in reality here the wife does.

I am quite confident that whoever is the next leader of Pakistan, he or she will not be clinging to power, like a rat on a floating board.What? You just said there will be an intermediate victory by Westernists followed by a takeover by Islamists. Get your story straight.

Rather, I would like to think that Pakistan will experience a period of actual political stability.What you'd like has jack all to do with what will actually happen.

Somehow, I'm not sure Mr. Rohde's efforts (I momentarily mistyped his name, and started to wonder if he was also responsible for the Jameson raid) have made that more likely.I don't think so, but I don't think anything he writes matters.

I also wonder: there is such a thing as a mob lawyer. Is there such a thing as a mob journalist? The mind boggles.I think I recall reading in Accardo: The Genuine Godfather of just such creatures.

But frankly, the Romans had it right when they said that the law is silent in time of war. If your country is invaded by an enemy army, you can't arrest every soldier wearing the wrong uniform, and charge them with trespassing. And the same applies even if the enemy adopts an urban guerrilla strategy.And you always talking about the importance of "the rule of law", and suspicious that a government will grab onto any excuse to increase its power?

holding them securely until the war is over and the winner is clearWhich could very well be never. Just killing them right away seems workable.

"We ask all our friends to do the impossible to have legality re-established; otherwise we are lost."Did that ever happen in Algeria?

It's a matter of record that billions and billions of dollars have gone from the Treasury to the Pakistani militaryI forget which empire Treasury is supposed to be a part of, but I still chuckle over your suggestion that elements hostile to Bush in the State department are funding Pakistani islamists over his objections.

DoD could not protect it from State without this factorWhat the hell can State do? What in concrete terms?

And the Palis have their own freakin' UN agency, for Christ' sakes.Who cares about the U.N. They were able to start a war in Korea, but since then they're the people who write strongly worded resolutions. Most countries around the world are backward and powerless and the U.N is where they can get together and grandstand. College faculties and Democratic Presidents and Congresscritters still prefer Israel to Palestine. I bet you'd like this from Volokh though.

Studd Beefpile:In reality PakMil is inefficient, corrupt, full of Islamic and NGOist sympathisers and riddled with internal politics.I hadn't heard of any NGOist sympathizers in the military.

MM:The question is: why? Why doesn't it purge itself, establish clear unity of command, and end the turmoil in Pakistan?That can be hard to do. It's probably easier to appease the West than to piss off people with guns whose support you require to stay in power.

In particular, the idea that you can suppress guerrilla movements without also suppressing "nonviolent" politics has no basis in reality. Unless you are actually prepared to deploy death squads and other counter-gang techniques, which makes even me a little queasy.Oh, come on. You seem to enamored of Red Empire clients to express shock, shock at death-squads and paramilitaries. You hardly seem queasy discussing Pinochet here. I also don't think Trudeau put any rival election candidates under arrest during the October Crisis.

The only answer can be that PakMil needs both the Westernists and the Islamists, because it has no exit strategy that involves turning Pakistan into Burma.What does it actually need the Westernists for? And how do you know "it has no exit strategy that involves turning Pakistan into Burma"?

I know very little about the Naxalites. I suspect the name is little more than a label for a certain type of banditAnd you are explaining foreign policy and counter-terrorism to us! Naxalites, as any schoolboy knows, are Indian Maoist rebels. Read more Global Guerillas and Coming Anarchy.

Lord Curzon or Akbar the Great would certainly have known how to deal with all these people.Luckily, Curzonblogs for CA.

Language Log has a fascinating post up right now suggesting that the very creation of Pakistan may have been due mostly to the efforts of the local equivalent of the Polygon to preserve their jobs, for which knowing Urdu was the prime qualification.

I confess to a problem. It's a peculiar sort of problem, the type of which would best be discussed over at Overcoming Bias but unfortunately the blogowner there has somewhat fascistic tendencies and has taken to censoring my comments on account of my opinion that his economic goals are not necessarily the goals that are objectively the very best for the largest number of people. He embodies Bias Overcome. But where were we? Oh yes, my problem:

I found this post fascinating but I'm unsure as to how authoritatively to regard it.

You see, I happen, over the course of my time, to have been involved internally with some interesting and arcane groups of people (such as ultra-orthodox Jews, etc.) and have seen how confident exposes of their lives and politics are often on the money and often so wrong as to be laughably funny in their every sentence. - But the writing styles are generally identical. How then, when dealing with Pakistan, about which I admittedly know close to nothing (well, more than 95% of my countrymen, as a conservative estimate, but still 'close to nothing' on any sort of non-relative scale) am I supposed to know how to distinguish between the Spot-On and the Way-Off?

I should make clear that I'm not in any way doubtful as to whether your analysis is close. I consider it highly unlikely that your making up bullshit out whole cloth - both on account of my (albeit minuscule) prior knowledge on the subject as well as on account of my prior knowledge of your other writings (not to mention the writing style employed in this piece on its own). I do wonder however as to what degree amorphous concepts were congealed into clear "facts", to what degree more relevant concepts and facts may have been overlooked, etc.

Of course the vetting by commentors has the ability to shine some light but it can only shine so much and the results remain inconclusive.

My favorite 'rough estimation for accuracy' when examining a wide-ranging meta-text is to look up how that text analyzes (or summarizes or otherwise describes) a particular subject that I know a great deal about (and which is written about often) and to hope that the author's treatment of this subject is representative of his treatment of other subjects as well. I'll give that a shot right now...

Inconclusive.

I looked up Jewish and Judaism.

I purposely did not look up Jew or Jews because I was interested in reading analysis of historical events or religious theology rather than gossip. But, as it turns out, I didn't come across a significant amount of analysis of historical eras or theology (though I did read a significant amount of analysis of anti-semitic gossip - analysis that I believe to be excellent and accurate). For this reason my long-shot try for a "representative sample" came up short.

Anyhow, I do want to clarify that I'm not in any way doubting the breadth of knowledge, understanding, rationality and sharp-mindedness of our host. I am however asking a question that I deem to be of some importance:

Within the spectrum ranging from "Not Irrational" to "Precisely Accurate As With Regards To Every Major Factor" - how is one to know at precisely which measuring point the above article (or any similar article) stands?